The  Adequacy  of  Christianity  to 
Meet  the  World’s  Need. 


BY  BISHOP  E.  R.  HENDRIX,  D.D.,  LL.D. 


THE  early  Christians  at  least  never  stopped  to  debate  the 
adequacy  of  Christianity  to  meet  the  world’s  need,  but 
with  profound  and  aggressive  faith  they  sought  to  make 
known  its  saving  power  among  nations.  They  believed  in  the 
spiritual  dynamics  of  the  gospel,  a power  that  resided  in  the 
truth  no  less  than  an  energy  that  asserted  itself  through  the  zeal 
of  those  who  received  it.  The  more  formidable  the  difficulties, 
the  graver  the  conditions,  the  more  eager  the  desire  to  test  the 
power  of  the  gospel.  It  was  the  world’s  need  that  even  attracted 
the  apostles  and  missionaries,  for  the)’  remembered  the  words  of 
the  Lord  Jesus  how  he  said:  “They  that  are  whole  have  no 
need  of  the  physician,  but  they  that  are  sick.”  Therefore  the 
more  desperate  the  case  the  more  anxious  were  they  to  apply 
the  remedy.  The  world’s  need  was  a perpetual 
The  Need  a challenge  to  the  gospel  with  its  power  of  an  end- 
Challenge.  less  life.  Great  cities,  then  as  now,  the  storm 
centers  of  the  unemployed  and  discontented, 
with  their  congested  masses  of  the  vicious  and  the  diseased,  had 
a peculiar  attraction  for  the  greatest  of  the  apostles.  Paul's 
Waterloos  were  Antioch,  Ephesus,  and  Corinth,  the  most  popu- 
lous cities  of  Syria,  Asia  Minor,  and  Greece,  but  he  longed  to 
preach  the  gospel  to  them  that  were  at  Rome  also.  To  do  that 
he  was  willing  to  undergo  shipwrecks  and  to  go  bound  in  chains. 


It  was  not  the  prosperous  journey  that  he  prayed  for,  as  in  the 
old  version,  but  that  if  by  any  means  he  might  be  prospered  by 
the  will  of  God  to  come  to  Rome.  It  was  because  he  was  con- 
scious of  having  some  spiritual  gift  to  impart  that  he  unceasingly 
made  mention  in  his  prayers  of  those  to  whom  he  felt  impelled 
to  go  that  he  might  have  some  fruit  among  them  even  as  among 
the  rest  of  the  Gentiles. 

It  was  a mighty  spirit  that  declared:  “I  am  debtor  both  to 
Greeks  and  Barbarians,  both  to  the  wise  and  to  the  foolish.  So, 
as  much  as  in  me  is,  I am  ready  to  preach  the  gospel  to  you  also 
that  are  in  Rome.  For  I am  not  ashamed  of  the  gospel,  for  it 
is  the  power  of  God  unto  salvation  to  every  one  that  believeth; 
to  the  Jew  first,  and  also  to  the  Greek.  For  therein  is  revealed 
a righteousness  of  God  by  faith  unto  faith:  as  it  is  written,  But 
the  righteous  shall  live  by  faith.”  It  was  doubtless  the  Roman 
world  that  Paul  had  in  mind  in  his  writings  and  preaching  when 
he  declared  that  this  gospel  had  been  preached  unto  the  Colos- 
sians  “as  also  in  all  the  world.”  That  was  the  world  of  Paul’s 
time,  embracing  the  best  of  the  three  continents  of 
Paul's  Europe.  Asia,  and  Africa,  with  their  diversities  of  tongue 
View,  and  nationalities,  of  religions  and  literatures  and  phil- 
osophies. The  best  that  Persia  or  Greece  or  Egypt  or 
Rome  could  offer  or  produce  was  all  in  that  world  with  its  crying 
needs  and  unassuaged  sorrows  and  festering  wounds.  So  confi- 
dent was  he  that  he  had  the  sole  remedy  entirely  adequate  for 
the  world’s  need  that  he  proclaimed  himself  a debtor  to  all  per- 
sons, of  whatever  speech  or  condition,  in  all  that  Roman  world. 
Nor  was  he  ignorant  of  the  worst  that  sin  has  wrought;  for  nei- 
ther Juvenal  nor  Tacitus  pictures  the  uncleanness,  the  wretched- 


ness,  the  malice,  the  self-complacency  of  wickedness  as  does  the 
inspired  apostle  who  has  the  sole  remedy  in  the  Christian  re- 
ligion. 

For  what  has  occasioned*  the  world’s  need,  with  its  ignorance, 
its  vice,  its  pollution,  its  squalor,  and  wretchedness?  “It  was 
sin  that  brought  death  into  the  world  and  all  our  woe.”  The 
whole  creation  groaneth  and  travaileth  in  pain  together  until 
now.  It  is  sin  that  has  disturbed  the  world’s  activity  and  har- 
mony, and  the  world’s  travail  is  in  hope  of  deliverance  from  this 
body  of  death.  The  world’s  need  comes  through  its  ignorance 
gnd  consequent  helplessness.  Because  the  whole  head  is  sick 
the  whole  heart  is  faint.  The  world’s  need  is  born  of  its  distrust 
of  men,  who  are  covenant  breakers,  without 
Cause  of  the  natural  affection,  unmerciful.  The  world’s 
World’s  Need,  need  is  the  more  appalling  because  of  human 
selfishness,  with  its  grasping  covetousness  and 
cruel  ambition,  which  delight  in  dragging  their  helpless  victims 
at  their  chariot  wheels.  The  need  of  the  world  is  for  light,  par- 
don, comfort,  strength,  hope,  purity.  That  Babylonian  senti- 
ment is  without  patience  and  without  pity  which  says:  “ Let  the 
fittest  survive;  none  other  deserves  to.”  As  applied  to  men  and 
women  it  is  the  motto  of  the  savage  as  he  starts  on  the  warpath, 
murdering  his  aged  parents  who  cannot  keep  up  on  the  forced 
marches  and  who  would  be  a burden.  The  pagan  philosopher 
that  welcomes  famine  and  pestilence  to  lessen  the  world’s  over- 
population finds  its  counterpart  in  the  unrelieved  sadness  of 
modern  science  which  sees  in  all  efforts  to  better  the  state  of  the 
weak  and  helpless  only  the  increase  of  the  aggregate  of  human 
suffering  by  augmenting  the  demand  without  adequate  means  of 


—3— 


supply.  In  both  views  the  world  is  orphaned.  It  was  this  wider 
view  of  the  race  that  made  Voltaire  say:  “Strike  out  a few 
sages,  and  the  crowd  of  human  beings  is  nothing 
Scientific  but  a horrible  assemblage  of  unfortunate  criminals. 
Pessimism,  and  the  globe  contains  nothing  but  corpses.  . . . 

I wish  I had  never  been  born.”  That  was  but  the 
European  world  that  he  described  a century  and  a half  ago.  At 
that  very  time  Christendom  had  forgotten  the  great  heathen 
world  where  scarce  a missionary  held  aloft  the  torch  of  truth. 
Christianity  at  times  needs  to  apologize  for  Christendom,  but 
heathendom  is  the  perpetual  condemnation  of  heathenism. 
“The  idea  of  man  as  a conscious,  rational,  moral  individual,  of 
worth  for  his  own  sake,  of  equal  dignity  before  his  Maker,  did 
not  exist  in  iniquity  till  it  came  into  being  through  Israel.”  No 
wonder  that  Xerxes  drove  his  soldiers  into  inclosures  in  order  to 
number  them  like  so  many  cattle.  It  is  not  until  we  see  the  in- 
dividual that  we  can  know  the  human  heart  and  discover  the 
world’s  needs  in  the  need  of  an  immortal  soul. 

There  can  be  no  remedy  without  a correct  diagnosis  of  the 
world’s  need.  It  is  superficial  treatment  that  sees  only  symp- 
toms. Philosophers  and  thinkers  in  all  ages  have  had  much  to 
say  of  evil  and  of  suffering;  but  appalled,  they  have  passed  by 
on  either  side  without  pouring  in  oil  or  wine  into  the  gaping 
wounds  of  humanity.  The  spirit  of  fatalism  regarded  highway 
robbery  as  one  of  the  necessary  evils  of  the  road  on  which  the 
rape  was  traveling.  Buddhism,  therefore,  thought  to  escape 
from  existence,  with  its  attendant  miseries,  while  Mohammedan- 
ism taught  “Islam,”  or  submission  without  hope,  since  man  was 
nothing.  A world  is  bankrupt  in  morals  when  bankrupt  in  faith. 


—4— 


Christianity  is  the  religion  of  redemption.  Redemp- 
T he  Sense  tion  from  sin  is  the  world’s  supreme  need.  But  the 
of  Sin.  confessed  existence  of  sin  is  possible  only  where 
there  is  a holy  God  whose  law  has  been  violated. 
Without  the  knowledge  of  God  and  of  his  law  man  has  never 
had  the  knowledge  of  sin.  It  is  unknown  in  the  heathen  world  as 
the  cause  of  its  suffering  and  its  woe.  Centuries  of  wretchedness 
have  not  awakened  the  consciousness  of  sin.  Nothing  can  do  that 
but  the  sight  of  a holy  God.  The  race  is  not  simply  unfortunate; 
it  is  sinful.  It  has  not  simply  violated  the  laws  of  health,  of  agri- 
culture, of  commerce,  of  reciprocity,  to  which  fact  its  misfor- 
tunes are  due.  It  has  broken  the  laws  of  a holy  God,  and  its 
sins  are  the  fruitful  cause  of  its  sufferings.  It  is  sin  which  has 
dulled  the  intellect,  stupefied  the  sensibilities,  and  weakened  the 
will.  The  brutal  selfishness  of  man  is  due  not  to  the  animal  in 
him  so  much  as  to  the  devil  in  him.  It  is  to  the  narrowing  influ- 
ence of  sin  that  social  relations  have  been  so  disordered,  the 
caste  spirit  has  been- so  powerful,  and  war  and  bloodshed  have 
abounded.  To  deny  sin  is  to  deny  the  existence  of  any  law  or 
code  of  ethics,  any  source  of  divine  authority.  To  deny  sin  is 
to  prevent  any  exalted  conception  of  worship,  is  to  leave  the 
world’s  need  undiagnosed  and  without  an  ade- 
To  Know  the  quate  remedy.  Hence  what  a beggarly  salvation 
Remedy  We  is  promised  by  any  other  religion  than  that  which 
Must  Know  reveals  the  Son  of  God  coming  to  seek  and  to 

the  Disease.  save  the  lost.  In  every  land  Christianity  has 

done  more  since  its  introduction  than  the  native 
religion  in  all  the  past.  Whatever  fails  to  recognize  the  moral 
needs  of  man  is  impotent  to  supply  them.  It  is  not  sanitation 


—5 


the  world  needs,  but  salvation;  not  “bread  and  games,”  but  the 
Bread  of  Life.  Art  cannot  gladden,  as  the  Greeks  learned,  un- 
less inspired  by  hope.  It  was  only  when  Christ  was  made  known 
that  art  found  its  true  inspiration,  its  noblest  theme,  and  a 
Michael  Angelo  was  born,  “who  never  moved  his  hand  until  he 
had  steeped  his  inmost  soul  in  prayer.” 

Christianity  not  only  diagnoses  accurately  the  world’s  need  by 
pointing  out  sin  as  at  once  the  great  disturber  and  corrupter,  but 
it  alone  of  all  religions  reveals  a righteous  God  who  is  alike  the 
Author  of  the  moral  law  and  its  exemplar.  Morality  and  reli- 
gion were  so  far  divorced  in  the  heathen  world  that  the  very  ex- 
ample of  the  gods  was  pleaded  in  excuse  for  every  sort  of  vice 
^.nd  crime.  The  philosophers  who  taught  morals  grew  sick  at 
heart  at  their  little  success  because  of  the  corrupting  example  of 
the  gods,  and  wished  for  a javelin  with  which  they  might  destroy 
these  enemies  of  society  like  Jupiter  and  Venus.  “There  was 
not  a gentleman  on  Olympus,”  not  a false  god  fit  to  be  invited 
into  your  home  or  to  converse  with  your  wife  and  daughters. 
The  vileness  of  the  Hindu  gods  is  the  great  foe  of  family  life  in 
India  now.  The  deity  taught  by  Mohammedanism  is  not  only  a 
cruel  despot,  but  one  who  panders  to  lust  in  furnishing  “the 
black-eyed  houris”  of  the  Moslem  Paradise.  In  the  gospel  alone 
is  revealed  the  righteousness  of  God,  a God  who  is  both  the  au- 
thor and  exemplar  of  the  moral  law,  inspiring 
God  the  Source  reverence  by  his  own  holy  nature  and  impart- 
of  Conscience.  ing  of  his  strength  and  nature,  enabling  men, 
giving  them  power,  to  become  the  sons  of 
God.  In  his  worship  alone  is  found  the  spirit  of  true  devotion, 
for  he  alone  can  awaken  devotion  whether  in  angels  or  men  who 


—6— 


is  the  high  and  holy  One  who  inhabiteth  eternity.  The  “ Holy, 
Holy,  Holy,  Lord  God  Almighty  ” which  the  angels  sing  ever 
becomes  the  devout  song  of  men  when  the  righteous  God  is  re- 
vealed. Righteousness,  if  it  exists  in  the  world,  is  born  of  faith 
in  a holy  God.  His  nature  is  revealed  to  faith,  and  the  righteous 
live  by  faith.  Without  a righteous  God  there  can  never  be  a 
righteous  world. 

Then  again  Christianity  speaks  with  sufficient  authority  to 
quicken  and  invigorate  the  conscience.  Christianity  may  almost 
be  said  to  create  a conscience  as  in  the  Dark  Continent  and 
other  parts  of  the  heathen  world.  While  consciousness  is  the 
knowledge  of  ourselves,  conscience  is  in  the  knowledge  of  God 
and  ourselves.  Unless  there  be  belief  in  God,  there  is  no  sense 
of  responsibility. 

If  there  be  no  lawgiver,  there  is  no  law  requiring  obedience, 
and  man  becomes  as  irresponsible  a being  as  the  brute,  to  whom 
no  revelation  has  ever  come  or  can  ever  come,  because  he  is  in- 
capable of  receiving  it.  The  conscience  of  the  Roman  was 
awakened  by  the  civil  law.  His  duties  were  those  he  owed  the 
State.  His  religion  was  a lifeless  ritualism,  a punctilious  repeti- 
tion of  liturgical  formulas,  burning  incense  before  every  oath  of 
office,  to  validate  every  note  or  mortgage  or  last  will  and  testa- 
ment. It  was  reverence  for  the  State,  not  for 
Other  Religions  any  idol.  Among  the  Greeks  raillery  and 
Wanting  in  jests  were  practiced  in  connection  with  the 
Moral  most  solemn  religious  processions.  The  mys- 

Sanctions.  teries  awoke  no  sense  of  obligation,  quickened 

no  conscience.  The  Oriental  worship  was  a 
sort  of  orgy  in  which  ecstasy  exaggerated  almost  to  frenzy  took 


—7— 


the  place  of  devotion.  Excesses  of  all  sorts  preceded  or  fol- 
lowed the  so-called  acts  of  worship  where  even  the  worship  itself 
did  not  consist  of  vile  and  sensual  practices  such  as  were  sup- 
posed to  be  indulged  in  by  the  gods  themselves.  In  Paul’s  fearful 
indictment  of  the  heathen  world  he  says  that  they  not  only  do 
such  things,  but  take  pleasure  in  them  that  do  them. 

But  Christianity  does  more  than  reveal  a righteous  God,  at 
once  the  Author  and  Exemplar  of  the  moral  law,  and  speak  with 
sufficient  authority  through  the  certainty  of  its  teachings  to 
quicken  and  invigorate  the  conscience.  It  can  do  what  no  other 
religion  can  do;  it  can  make  alive.  “ Christianity  is  a new  com- 
mandment with  power  to  obey.”  Christ  not  only  assumes  the 
supreme  place  as  the  Ruler  of  human  society,  “the  most  dra- 
matic movement  in  the  experience  of  collective  man,”  but  at- 
tached to  every  precept  is  a promise  of  help.  If  the  law  was 
given  by  Moses,  grace  and  truth  came  by  Jesus  Christ.  Christi- 
anity not  only  reveals  a righteous  God,  but  declares  that  man, 
too,  may  be  righteous.  It  is  a revelation  to  faith  that  the  right- 
eous may  live  by  faith.  By  its  help  the  withered  hand  may  be 
stretched  out  and  the  palsied  limb  begin  to  walk,  the  very  dead 
can  come  forth  from  the  grave,  though  bound  hand  and  foot. 
Every  doctrine  of  Christianity  passes  through  the  experience  of 
Christian  living  and  becomes  real  through  its  power  to  help. 

God  is  a Father,  Christ  is  a Saviour,  the  Holy 
Reviving  Power  Spirit  is  a Comforter,  there  is  fellowship  with 
o[  Ghristianiiy.  God’s  people  who  have  had  like  experiences 
of  truth,  and  there  is  an  indwelling  power  to 
help  overcome  evil.  This  is  the  victory  that  overcomes  the 
world,  even  our  faith.  Christianity  is  not  a mere  spirit,  a spirit 


— 8 — — 


unclothed,  but  it  enters  into  the  individual  that  he  may  be 
strengthened  by  God’s  Spirit  in  the  inner  man,  it  enters  into  the 
very  institutions  of  mankind  and  molds  or  reforms  them  for  its 
own  purposes,  and  thus  changes  human  society  into  the  Church 
and  the  body  of  Christ.  The  Spirit  of  God  does  not  enter  the 
human  soul  as  something  foreign  or  extraneous  to  it.  He  enters 
it  as  the  principle  of  its  true  life.  The  word  “holy”  is  scarce 
applicable  to  a single  person  in  the  heathen  world,  but  there  is 
hardly  a town  in  Christendom  that  has  not  had  some  holy  person 
who  showed  what  it  meant  to  receive  power  to  become  a son  of 
God.  Faith  sees  a righteous  God  and  becomes  like  him.  He  is 
able  to  do  exceeding  abundantly  above  what  we  ask  or  think  ac- 
cording to  this  power  that  worketh  in  us.  He  causes  the  Spirit- 
filled  man  to  declare:  “I  can  do  all  things  through  Christ  that 
strengthened  me.”  It  was  such  transforming  power  that  made 
men  kings  and  priests  unto  God,  so  that  when  any  great  enter- 
prise was  undertaken  in  the  Roman  Empire  men  knew  that  it 
was  either  the  emperor  or  a Christian  who  did  it. 

Henry  Drummond  somewhere  says:  “Next  to  love  for  the 
chief  of  sinners  the  most  touching  thing  about  the  religion  of 
Christ  is  its  amazing  trust  in  the  least  of  saints.  Here  is  the 
mightiest  enterprise  ever  launched  upon  this  earth,  mightier  than 
creation,  because  it  is  re-creation,  and  the  carry- 
Drurnmond.  ing  it  out  is  left,  so  to  speak,  to  haphazard,  to  in- 
dividual loyalty,  to  free  enthusiasms,  to  uncoerced 
activities,  to  an  uncompelled  response  to  the  pressure  of  God’s 
Spirit.”  But  in  the  presence  and  leadership  of  the  Spirit,  and 
in  what  he  has  made  of  redeemed  man  and  can  do  with  redeemed 
man,  is  found  the  glory  of  our  religion.  It  is  the  Spirit  that 


buickeneth  and  leadeth.  “He  opened  the  portals  of  grace  to 
the  Gentile  world,  arranging  every  detail  of  the  special  service 
at  which  the  Roman  centurion  was  converted.”  It  is  this  con- 
sciousness of  his  divine  presence  that  enables  a devout  Church 
to  say:  “ It  seemed  good  to  the  Holy  Ghost  and  to  us.”  Chris- 
tianity is  not  alone  the  religion  of  redemption  for  the  individual, 
but  it  makes  him  the  instrument  of  redemption  to  his  fellow 
man.  Other  religions  have  regarded  man  from  the  standpoint 
of  the  State  or  as  a member  of  a religious  brotherhood,  but  it 
remained  for  Christianity  to  teach  the  great  truth  and  fact  of 
human  brotherhood  and  to  awaken  an  interest  in  universal  man. 
Only  a universal  religion  could  do  that,  one  having  in  it  the  very 
elements  of  universal  power  and  conquest.  “I  believe  in  the 
communion  of  saints”  is  impossible  in  any  pagan  creed.  Hea- 
thenism was  without  congregational  life.  Public  spirit  developed 
itself  simply  on  the  political  side.  Christianity 
Qhristianity  taught  men  that  their  citizenship  was  in  heaven, 
a Universal  and  organized  the  brotherhood  of  humanity  when 
Religion.  it  taught  the  communion  of  saints  and  that  the 
Church  existed  for  the  edification  of  believers  and 
the  conversion  of  the  world.  Among  Buddhists  the  holier  the 
man  the  less  he  had  to  do  with  his  fellow  men.  He  was  so 
saintly  as  to  be  absolutely  worthless.  His  was  the  religion  of 
selfishness,  not  helpfulness.  Little  did  Rome  know  when  she 
was  persecuting  the  early  Christians  that  she  was  destroying  that 
which  alone  could  save  her.  The  weak  side  of  the  empire,  the 
very  cause  of  her  ruin,  was  the  moral  deterioration  of  the  lower 
classes.  Her  adoption  of  Christianity  could  have  saved  her  by 
saving  them  and  their  rulers  as  well.  The  very  social  meetings 


— io — 


of  Christians,  such  as  the  agapae  cr  love  feasts,  were  forbidden 
through  fear.  ( 

Christianity  thus  lays  bare  the  world’s  true  need  as  a need  of 
redemption,  and  shows  a righteous  Father,  against  whom  and 
all  whose  holy  attributes  man  has  sinned.  But  man’s  case  is  not 
hopeless,  because  God  is  a Father  who  is  seeking  his  prodigal 
sons,  trying  to  bring  them  to  themselves  that  he  may  bring  them 
back  to  him.  Christianity  is  the  religion  of  hope  despite  the 
hopeless  condition  of  the  race  which  has  made  all  men  despair 
of  it  save  those  who  have  seen  the  light  of  the  knowledge  of  the 
glory  of  God  shining  in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ.  Though  sin 
has  bestialized  man  and  made  him  a wolf  to  his  fellow  man,  the 
larger  view  of  God  which  Christianity  gives  awakens  better  ex- 
pectations of  man.  “ No  universal  religion  can  hold  to  an  im- 
perfect conception  of  God.”  Only  a God  of 
Its  Revelation  infinite  perfections  can  have  compassion  enough 
of  God.  and  patience  enough  and  love  enough  to  save  a 

race  of  prodigals  who  have  wasted  both  sub- 
stance and  life.  Christ  comes  into  the  midst  to  undertake  for 
us,  and  lays  down  his  life  to  show  the  possibility  of  forgiveness 
with  God  and  the  power  of  an  endless  life  in  man.  He  becomes 
our  elder  brother  to  teach  us  the  brotherhood  of  man,  a doctrine 
that  was  a stumbling  block  to  the  Jews,  and  to  the  Greeks  fool- 
ishness, but  to  us  the  wisdom  of  God  and  the  power  of  God. 
This  regeneration  of  man,  making  mankind  a new  genus,  or 
race,  is  possible  because  at  bottom  man  is  a spirit,  and  God’s  ap- 
peal to  the  deepest,  most  central  part  of  man,  his  spirituality. 
But  Christianity  does  not  propose  simply  to  save  the  spirit  and 
cast  away  the  body,  but  it  teaches  that  the  body  is  a temple  of 


— ii— 


the  Holy  Ghost  which  Christ  has  come  to  redeem.  It  is  a com- 
plete salvation  which  redeems  both  body  and  soul.  But  it  is 
more  than  all  this:  it  is  an  enduring  salvation,  for  it  saves  forever. 

Christianity  is  thus  the  final  religion,  because  none  can  ever 
arise  to  teach  or  do  more.  There  can  never  be  any  doctrine 
higher  than  the  Fatherhood  of  God,  broader  than  the  brother- 
hood of  man,  deeper  than  sin  and  spirituality, 
Its  Finality . more  complete  than  the  destiny  of  both  soul  and 
body,  and  more  enduring  than  eternity.  Christi- 
anity is  like  the  holy  city,  the  new  Jerusalem  descending  out  of 
heaven:  the  length  and  the  breadth  and  the  height  of  it  are  equal. 
It  is  the  very  tabernacle  of  God  with  men.  Its  perfections  ex- 
haust at  once  the  power  of  thought  and  speech,  as  we  behold 
the  depth  of  the  riches  both  of  the  wisdom  and  the  knowledge 
of  God. 

Not  only  is  Christianity  adequate  to  the  world’s  need  because 
of  its  lofty  and  exhaustive  teachings  and  elevated  morals;  there 
is  no  religion  comparable  to  it.  The  highest  aim,  whether  of 
nature  as  seen  by  the  agnostic,  or  of  Christianity  expressing  the 
mind  and  heart  of  God,  is  not  the  creation  or  production  of  any 
othe-r  creation  or  production  of  any  other  creature,  but  the  per- 
fection of  man,  the  masterpiece  of  creation.  Man,  too,  is  the 
final  product  of  religion.  The  professed  aim  of  Buddhism  is  the 
extinguishment  of  personality;  that  of  Christianity  is  the  fullness 
of  personality.  The  controlling  thought  of  Buddhism  is  that  the 
only  good  Chinaman  is  a dead  Chinaman;  the  claim  of  Christi- 
anity is  that  the  best  man  is  not  the  one  who  has  the  least  but 
the  most  manhood,  whose  personality  is  not  diminished,  but 
completed  and  that  the  truly  good  man,  whether  Chinaman  or 


American,  is  the  regenerated  one.  Islam  is  an  ethical  and  social 
system  that  is  a menace  to  the  world.  The  des- 
Ghristianity  potisms  where  it  prevails  are  not  accidents,  but 
Unique.  the  ligitimate  results  of  the  Koran;  and  so  long  as 

the. Koran  exists  as  the  authoritative  book  noth- 
ing better  can  come  in  their  stead,  when  the  very  god  of  the  Ko- 
ran is  a willful  despot  and  men  are  simply  his  slaves.  If  England 
has  a submerged  tenth,  what  shall  we  say  of  Turkey  and  Persia, 
with  their  submerged  nine-tenths?  Christ  alone  is  the  “Light 
of  Asia.”  Only  under  the  influence  of  the  Christ  who  brought 
immortality  and  life  to  light  by  the  gospel  do  the  human  facul- 
ties find  their  largest  scope  and  play.  Because  man  is  an  im- 
mortal being  he  is  worthy  of  sympathy  and  help,  and  a new  order 
of  society  is  possible,  the  result  of  spiritual  forces  set  in  motion 
through  Christ. 

Christianity  is  Christ,  and  there  is  but  one  Christ.  There 
have  been  many  prophets,  but  only  one  Christ.  There  have 
been  many  leaders,  but  only  one  Christ.  There  have  been  many 
kings  and  priests,  but  only  one  Christ.  There  can  be  no  second 
Bethlehem,  no  second  Calvary,  no  second  Olivet,  no  second 
Christ.  And  Christ  is  King,  because  he  is  Saviour.  He  governs 
men  because  he  has  redeemed  men.  Men  live  for  him  and  in  hina 
because  he  died  for  them.  It  is  what  Christ  teaches,  what  Christ 
suffers,  what  Christ  does,  what  Christ  is,  that  makes  Christian- 
ity. When  any  other  religion  can  produce  a Christ,  a Saviour 
of  his  people,  then  alone  can  it  do  anything  adequate  for  the 
world’s  need. 

What  Christianity  can  do  for  the  world’s  need  may  best  be 
known  by  what  it  once  did  for  the  world  in  which  Paul  preached 


—13— 


it,  the  proud  Roman  world  coextensive  with  the  power,  the  cul- 
ture, the  religions  of  the  great  nations  of  the  three  then  known 
continents  which  acknowledged  the  supremacy  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  while  the  Mediterranean  which  washed  the  shores  of 
these  continents  was  itself  a Roman  lake.  Here  was 
What  It  the  Pantheon  against  Christ,  all  the  gods  of  the  an- 
Has  Done,  cient  world  with  the  Roman  emperor  at  their  head 
deified  as  “lord  and  god  ” to  represent  the  supre- 
macy of  the  State  against  one  whom  a Roman  governor  desig- 
nated as  “Jesus,  that  is  called  Christ.”  That  the  religion  of 
Christ,  which  was  not  even  the  religion  of  his  own  people,  a 
people  subject  to  a Roman  yoke,  should  overthrow  every  reli- 
gion represented  in  the  Pantheon  until  the  gods  and  temples  which 
seemed  inseparable  from  the  literature  and  life  of  the  people 
should  be  left  without  a single  worshiper,  and  only  broken  im- 
ages and  altars  be  left  to  satisfy  the  curiosity  of  the  student  of 
the  classics  seemed  utterly  incredible.  As  Prof.  Freeman  says: 
“That  Christianity  should  become  the  religion  of  the  Roman 
Empire  is  the  miracle  of  history,  but  that  it  did  so  become  is  the 
leading  fact  of  history  from  that  day  onward.”  The  converts  of 
Christianity  were  among  the  educated  rather  than  the  uneducat- 
ed, in  the  cities  rather  than  in  the  villages,  which  were  last  to 
yield  to  new  ideas  and  the  new  faith.  Paul’s 
“ T he  Miracle  great  epistles,  with  their  deep  thoughts,  their 
of  History.”  closely  knit  reasoning,  and  their  views  of  truth 
reaching  out  into  the  eternities  before  and 
after,  were  on  the  face  of  them  not  intended  for  illiterates  or 
weaklings.  It  was  then  that  Christianity  showed  its  power  to 
stimulate,  to  inspire,  and  to  lead  the  world’s  progress  because  of 


—14— 


what  it  did  to  meet  the  world’s  need.  Never  was  the  moral  dis- 
ability of  the  world  greater  than  when  Christianity  began  its 
triumphant  career  in  the  Roman  Empire,  and  that  without  tem- 
ples, altars,  images,  and  opposed  less  by  the  priests  or  decaying 
religions,  too  far  gone  to  offer  violence,  than  by  the  strong  arm 
of  the  State  and  the  proud  philosophy  of  the  schools.  What 
was  the  secret  of  its  triumph? 

Next  to  its  divine  Lord  and  Founder,  and  because  of  him,  its 
success  was  due  to  what  the  new  religion  did  in  satisfying  the 
world’s  need.  Christ,  who  fitted  for  paradise  the  dying  thief 
whose  faith  and  love  so  quickly  followed  his  penitential  tears, 
was,  before  the  close  of  the  first  century,  recognized  even  in 
Caesar’s  household  as  greater  than  Caesar,  and  some  two  centu- 
ries later  was  worshiped  from  the  throne  of  the 
The  Secret  of  Roman  Empire.  It  was  Christianity  that  stopped 
Its  Success.  human  sacrifices;  ended  the  gladiatorial  shows 
and  licentious  sports  of  the  amphitheater;  drove 
from  the  continent  of  Europe  the  unnatural  vices  which  Paul 
described  in  his  Epistle  to  the  Romans,  and  which  still  abound 
in  the  Turkish  Empire  and  in  India;  put  an  end  to  the  exposure 
of  infants  to  death  by  wild  beasts  or  starvation;  checked  the 
spirit  of  private  revenge  and  of  cruel  and  ceaseless  warfare  by 
proclaiming  the  “Truce  of  God’’  from  Thursday  to  Monday  of 
each  week  as  covering  the  time  of  the  passion  and  resurrection 
of  our  Lord;  abolished  slavery,  which  was  coextensive  with 
Europe;  taught  purity;  established  charities  of  all  kinds;  trans- 
formed the  morals  of  Europe  and  of  the  Roman  Empire  by  sanc- 
tifying childhood,  honoring  womanhood,  and  reverencing  old 
age.  All  this  was  done,  too,  despite  the  relentless  persecutions 


—15— 


in  Asia  Minor,  Africa,  and  Gaul,  which  not  only  sat- 
The  Need  urated  the  soil  with  blood  and  cast  the  ashes  of 
NLet.  martyrs  into  the  rivers,  while  the  mocking  crowds 

looked  on  to  see  what  had  become  of  the  boasted 
doctrine  of  the  resurrection,  but  furnished  such  countless  vic- 
tims for  the  Roman  amphitheater  that  the  very  wild  beasts 
tired  of  attacking  them  as  if  they  themselves  had  become  men 
when  the  Romans  had  become  beasts.  But  the  real  triumph 
of  Christianity  was  not  when  the  Emperor  Constantine  was  bap- 
tized, or  even  when  the  Roman  Senate  formally  adopted  Chris- 
tianity as  the  true  and  only  religion  of  the  empire;  it  was  when 
the  emperor  Galerius,  who  was  the  real  author  of  the  most  cruel 
of  all  the  persecutions  under  his  predecessor,  Diocletian,  finally 
put  an  end  to  the  burning  of  temples  and  sacred  books  and  the 
slaughter  of  Christians  by  his  historic  edict  of 
Final  Triumph  toleration  issued  in  311,  which  declared  that 
in  Rome.  the  purpose  of  the  persecutions  had  failed,  and 

not  only  gave  permission  to  Christians- to  hold 
their  religious  assemblies,  but  added  this  instruction,  “that  after 
this  manifestation  of  grace  they  should  pray  their  God  for  the 
welfare  of  the  emperor,  of  the  State,  and  of  themselves,  that  the 
.State  might  prosper  in  every  respect,  and  that  they  might  live 
quietly  in  their  homes.’’  This  was  when  the  Galilean  indeed 
conquered,  and  Paul,  who  had  fallen  a martyr  before  one  Roman 
emperor,  saw  another  one  stand  up  for  prayers.  Then  it  was 
from  the  third  heavens  that  Paul  saw  things  on  earth  that  were 
lawful  to  utter,  and  they  are  lawful  still.  The  hope  of  the  whole 
race  as  that  of  the  proudest  people  of  antiquity,  a people  having 
crucified  the  Prince  of  Life,  sought  to  destroy  all  his  followers, 
reveling  in  power  that  was  rapidly  passing  away  before  a king- 
dom that  should  endure  forever,  is  the  hope  alike  of  the  individ- 
ual and  of  the  nation  that  the  gospel  of  Christ  is  the  power  of 
God  unto  salvation  to  every  one  that  believeth. 

Board  of  Missions  Methodist  Episcopal  Church,  South,  Nashville,  Tcnn. 


— 16 — 


